Posted
by
Zonk
on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @09:19AM
from the true-capitalism-in-action dept.

Dekortage writes "Have you ever ratted somebody out? If it was a legal case, you might end up on Who's A Rat, an online database of police informants and undercover agents, identified through various publicly-available documents such as court briefings. The data-mined information is now available online at a price. As reported in the New York Times, 'The site says it has identified 4,300 informers and 400 undercover agents, many of them from documents obtained from court files available on the Internet.' Understandably, U.S. judges and law enforcement agents are upset, although defense lawyers seem to like the idea. Where do you draw the line between legal transparency and secrecy?"

"Among other things, the jury returned a general forfeiture judgment of $2.7 million against BUCCI, and judgments of forfeiture of his house at 23 Marshall Street in North Reading, a 2002 Chevrolet Avalanche SUV, a boat, and $35,000 in a bank account."

Didn't some guy write an article something along the lines of "Who's a Government Agent Whose Husband Disagrees With the Policies of the Current Administration?"
There was a bit of a kerfuffle over that if I recall.

Aide to (Republican) Senator Bob DoleForeign policy advisor to (Republican) President-elect Ronald Reagan.Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia and Pacific Affairs in the (Republican) Reagan administration.Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy in the (Republican) Reagan administration.Roving ambassador in the (Republican) first Bush administration.Foreign policy advisor to (Republican) George W. Bush in the 2000 campaign.Deputy Secretary of State in the (Republican) second Bush administration.

Just b/c a person does not support Bush and his administration, does not mean that person is a Democrat. Maybe he is a Republican that doesn't like Bush? There are lots of reasons to disapprove of the Bush administration that fall outside of traditional political cheer-leading.

Nonsense, this is a compilation of information that is already publicly available. All this site does it make it easier to reference. It isn't as if the site blows the whistle on anyone, the whistle is already blown.

That's like giving Slashdot credit for terrorism hysteria when all Slashdot did was post links to the stories on CNN, FOX, and the BBC.

If anyone *really* wants somebody from this list dead, doesn't it seem reasonable to think think they would've acted on that desire back when the information originally became public in the respective court case?

Talk about a list that you don't want to be mistakenly included!Yes, but a FAKE list like this might be brilliant:

1. Identify 2nd/3rd highest ranking members in gangs2. Post their names as rats on a website claiming to out undercover agents3. Gang leader has them killed4. Go to step 1 a few times5. Post leader's name as supposed agent6. Any remaining members kill leader

The resulting gang, much reduced in leadership and too paranoid to work effectively as a team, would be much easie

I should catch up on all the episodes and memorize them so they are easier to cite the next time I defend myself in court.

Your Honor, in my defense, I'd like to direct your attention to Law & Order, Season 7, Epsiode 15. Yes, clearly it was the politically connected Step-father who murdered the co-ed he was having an affair with. And, as if that weren't enough, I'd like to ask the prosecution some leading questions in regards to Wookies."

Your Honor, in my defense, I'd like to direct your attention to Law & Order, Season 7, Epsiode 15. Yes, clearly it was the politically connected Step-father who murdered the co-ed he was having an affair with. And, as if that weren't enough, I'd like to ask the prosecution some leading questions in regards to Wookies."

Dude, you're clearly not competent enough to be your own defense. You should never request permission to ask leading questions.

What about government maintained lists of sex offenders? Like people on that list for crimes under the umbrella of "sex crimes" don't get death threats pledging to kill that pedophile pervert, even though they might have just been caught peeing in a bush? What about people falsely accused [slashdot.org] that get their names smeared in public?

This smacks of the same kind of "we're your lords and masters who dare not be questioned" as this topic [slashdot.org] does, as does this one [slashdot.org].

IANAL, so now would be a pre-emptively good time for me to ask someone to detail what exactly "entrapment" is and how undercover infiltrators relate to it.

No, the odds of a catastrophic house fire with smoke detectors, etc, is about 1 in 500 [msn.com].

By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightening are about 1 in 240,000. Think about that... a child is approximately three times more likely to get struck by lightening as to be sexually abused by a stranger.

Posting information about informants in a murder, rape, arson, theft case is reprehensible. But, I have no sympathy, none, nada for informants/undercover agents in drug cases. Drug laws are also reprehensible. And before anyone says "Well, a lot of the people higher up in the illegal drug trade are responsible for murder and other crimes", most of that would disappear, as well as a lot of money that funds organized crime, if drugs were made legal.

Surely whether you agree or not, you must believe that many of the people involved in drug enforcement are convinced that it is the right thing to do? That they believe they are saving lives? Do they deserve to die for that mistaken belief?

Do Islamic terrorists deserve to die for their mistaken belief that carrying out Jyhad is the correct thing to do? Do US soldiers deserve to die in Iraq for their mistaken belief that they are fighting for a good cause? Anytime you join up with some organization that m

As I pointed out to the other responder, I think it is somewhat ridiculous to try to compare:
Jihadist believer who kills people for his beliefs.
to
Anti drug beliver who snitches on drug dealers for his beliefs.

I do too. That wasn't the comparison I was making. Try instead: Jihadist who dies for his beliefs vs. DEA agent who dies for his beliefs. If you put your life on the line in the belief that a better good will be the result, without empirical evidence to support that belief, then you are a fool,

I made no claim as to the 'badness' of either one. I am only trying to point out that just because one person thinks that they are convinced they right in what they are doing, it does not give them the right -- or make them right -- to use any means necessary. Again, this is irrespective of the nature of these means; one person being VERY "wrong" does not make a more minor "wrong" right.

Except that's the whole point of the list. Giving us something to fight back against government oppression. The US government is waging a war on it's own citizens, to the point where it has the highest proportion [commondreams.org] of it's population imprisoned of any country in the world. The cops are not necessarily the good guys.

When you risk getting informants or cops murdered in reprisal killings. That seems like a good line to draw.

Reprisal killings are this big scary monster that is blown way out of proportion. About 50 officers a year are murdered, and in '04, there were ~850,000 officers in the US. That's a homicide victim rate of 0.00058%. Guess what it is nation-wide? 0.0056%. You read that correctly. Police officers have a homicide victim rate that is one tenth that of the general population despite working a job we'd assume puts them at more danger of being murdered. The #1 cause of death for police? Traffic collisions, overwhelmingly. Don't believe me? Go check out the DoJ and FBI statistics; they spend a lot of effort compiling these stats.

On the flip side, "snitches" are a huge problem, as are "expert" witnesses. If you want to be scared out of your mind, read John Grisham's The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, ISBN 0385517238. A hick prosecutor and police department, with plenty of help from a state crime lab "expert", put SEVERAL men on DEATH ROW despite massive flaws in the evidence and witnesses against them and horrendously flawed trials.

BOSTON, MA - A North Reading man was convicted late yesterday in federal court of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, money laundering, structuring financial transactions, and tax evasion.

United States Attorney Michael J. Sullivan; Douglas A. Bricker, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation in Boston; and June W. Stansbury, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in New England, announced that SEAN P. BUCCI, age 34, of 23 Marshall Street, North Reading, Massachusetts, was convicted by a jury sitting before Senior U.S. District Judge Morris E. Lasker on charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute over 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, possession with intent to distribute over 100 kilograms of marijuana, conspiracy to commit money laundering, two substantive counts of money laundering, seven substantive counts of structuring currency transactions, and four counts of tax evasion.

What exactly is the whole premise behind this idea, if not to protect those who do wrong from being called out or caught? Isn't the whole point of being a whistleblower or informant that you can either help put bad guys behind bars or expose a corporate scandal or safety breach without fear of reprisal, because your identity is kept secret? Or am I completely missing the point here?
It just seems to be that the whole point of this website is to give bad guys the ability to track down and "punish" those who actually help the authorities curtail their wrongdoings.

What exactly is the whole premise behind this idea, if not to protect those who do wrong from being called out or caught? Isn't the whole point of being a whistleblower or informant that you can either help put bad guys behind bars or expose a corporate scandal or safety breach without fear of reprisal, because your identity is kept secret? Or am I completely missing the point here? It just seems to be that the whole point of this website is to give bad guys the ability to track down and "punish" those who

This definitely seems like attack on law and order - when properly authorized and overseen, undercover investigations are one of the few legitimate means of acting to prevent crime in a way that can be ethically and logically defensible for a state. And I'm very much in favor of more prevention (where compatible with human and civil rights), and less mindless punishment in terms of law and public order.If this was a site devoted to outing torturers or other players in indefensible state actions, I'd unders

"This definitely seems like attack on law and order - when properly authorized and overseen, undercover investigations are one of the few legitimate means of acting to prevent crime in a way that can be ethically and logically defensible for a state."

Bullshit [november.org]. Informants are often criminals themselves and are paid for their information. Undercover policework walks a very thin line to keep from crossing over into entrapment. Not to mention, almost all of the "wrongdoing" that this network of lies is trying to stop is victimless drug crime.

If judges and prosecutors are going to use people's MySpace, Facebook, and Google search results against them and claim, "Hey, it's a public record!" then they shouldn't be surprised or outraged by this. The whole trend of using publicly available online data to snoop on people is a two way street.

I went to West Virginia University, and the other large University in the state was Marshall.

When anyone would get busted in Marshall for any reason, they were given 2 choices.

A. Go to Jail and pay the consequences.B. Go to WVU to school and continue your education on US, while working undercover.

You would be surprised at how many times this happens. It also happened with people I knew (or thought I knew) when they were busted at WVU and sent to MU for "REHAB".

Nonetheless, it's funny they're doing this, simply because if someone's a supposed "rat" and they're found out... you're more than likely not messing with the scene anymore. If you're honestly doing anything that has risk, your best bet is to just not meet new people and don't deal with people that wouldn't go down for you.

In other words, you're going to get caught if you're stupid or deal with stupid people. When messing with drugs, you're usually messing with fucked up people. If you stay in long enough, those fucked-up people are going to get you caught.

If they are using public records to compile the list, then how "secret" is the information expected to be?

Actually, this is pretty typical of privacy issues that have arisen in recent years. There has always been shit-tons of information about you that was public information, but it was scattered through paper files in dozens or hundreds of offices, and collecting any of it, much less all of it, was such an expensive and time-consuming task that the very difficulty involved provided a great deal of protecti

So basically, everything goes as long as it's somehow difficult or annoying to do it? But as soon as an automated system is up, then it becomes illegal?
Riddle me this, is it right or wrong to have the identifying information available in court orders etc? If it's right, this guy has done nothing wrong. And if it's wrong, it shouldn't have been available in the first place (AND you support oppressive, secretive gov'ts, but that's an argument for another day). Either way, it's not this guy's fault. Unless it

The hell they can't. Example. In most states, judges are allowed to "correct" trial transcripts at will with no oversite. If the judge were biased, and didn't want his ruling to be overturned on appeal...

Anyway, I'm sure that with a helpful judge, the witness relocation project has created tons of false court documents. As long as no one is convicted based on a falsified document, I'm not sure it's even illegal.

Besides the document wouldn't have to exist anywhere except for this site. You could e

That's really the question here. Are court officers and informants at risk of death or major injury due to this data being made public at this time. I do not argue that the information should be censored permanently. But a temporary court order to cease distribution of those names during court proceedings seems perfectly reasonable.Which means that as long as those undercover officers have pending investigations and court dates, their names and faces should be protected from public disclosure until they're

As if we didn't have enough problems with the "anti-snitch culture" that prevents law enforcement from finding witnesses in places like the inner cities when serious crimes are committed! Now we'd end up with a sex offender-style registry of people who have cooperated. This sort of thing has to go, unless you want such things as secret evidence and witnesses to start becoming topics for debates on constitutional amendments.

This goes along with the whole "Don't snitch" campaign taking place in Philadelphia, LA, and a whole host of other places including my own city and one a bit further south.

After all, why help the cops do their job trying to track down the person who murdered your son/daughter/husband/wife/whatever when it is so much easier to just go out, get a gun from the guy on the corner and shoot the person.

As far as the baby [newsdaily.com] shot [topix.net] in a drive-by [todaystmj4.com], there is no need for you to be an eyewitness.

If the police really wanted to turn those "No Snitch" movements around, they should go back to doing what they have written on their cars: To Protect and Serve.

As opposed to racial profiling. As opposed to beating suspects mercilessly when they present no danger to the officer. As opposed to taking their sweet time to respond to inner-city disturbances while rushing to rich neighborhoods. As opposed to villifying teenagers that are just bored and want to hang out in a public place and not causing any trouble. As opposed to the "we are above the law" attitude that many many officers seem to have.

I remember getting pulled over by an undercover detective for looking at him wrong. Quite literally. He parked his unmarked vehicle with illegally dark tints across two handicapped spaces at my local bank branch and some old lady had to park considerably farther. As I left the ATM I saw him getting into his vehicle and I saw this poor thing with the appropriate handicapped tag in no more complicated than a nightgown struggling with her walker.

I stared at him nastily. I wanted him to feel the shame that others were judging him. Obviously I rubbed him the wrong way since I drove off maybe three blocks before this guy turned on ol' red and blues mounted on his dashboard. I was pulled over and given a lecture about how HE was keeping me safe.

Pro tip: in those situations, the only thing you should do is "Yes, officer" lest you get tazered.

Hell, I live in South Florida... NBC did a story on filing complaints to police stations. Most of the stations just wanted a verbal report and wouldn't provide him with the anonymous forms required under law. To top it all off, when the report got on the air, the investigator had a BOLO notice posted! "Fuck da police" isn't just because we're rebellious: it's because so many DO WRONG.

Questioning witnesses for murders is movie-time. Law and Order on CBS time. It happens, but it's not so prevalent that doors are being knocked on day in and out to find out where they were on August the 11th at 3:19am.

If the police stopped intentionally being antagonists to the citizenry maybe we'd cooperate more.

Silly Personal Anecdote:One time, when I was following my girlfriend in her car (I was driving my car), I saw her pulled over. To make a long story short, after a few minutes, the cops walked away from her car, and we continued on home. I called her up, expecting her to be crying over a ticket, or scared about a warning.

In reality, they pulled her over to ask for her phone number, and her friend's (who was sitting in the passenger seat) phone number.

but of course, you will hear the regular cacophony of folks here on slashdot who can only think of subjects like this in a vacuum, outside of real world effects, and support "who's a rat", just because it's vaguely antigovernment

as if the government is the source of all of our problems in the world. as if the police are only the brutal shock troops of tyranny

gee, i dunno, maye sometimes law enforcement is there to fight simple straightforward crime and protect us and we should help them do that?

Do their families deserve to be put in danger? I doubt every undercover agent is single, many of them would have extended family as well. Regardless of what you think of undercover agents, you can't believe that there families should also be put at risk. It doesn't need to be said that they're are some very ruthless people in the drug trade.

...and if your brother/cousin/son/etc decides to become an undercover cop?

By the time you find out about a family member working as an undercover anything, you'll likely be dodging bullets. It's not as if you go to the annual family reunion and Uncle Steve says "What am I doing these days? Why, I'm an undercover cop."

If this information is already publicly available in court records anyone who wanted to get back at their snitch probably could. All this does is consolidate it.

If you have an issue with this its the fact that these names of undercover agents are publicly available as it is.

While I have little to no sympathy for snitches, under cover agents should be protected by the legal entities that employ them. I see no reason why the names of under cover agents need to be public record in court cases.

I see no reason why the names of under cover agents need to be public record in court cases.

Of course their identity needs to be public record. They're individuals testifying in a court case. What are you going to do, have a cop take the stand as "Mr. Anonymous"? Cops already are known to lie on the stand occasionally, but can you imagine if they were allowed to testify and never have their name revealed? There would be no accountability whatsoever! They could say anything they wanted, and even if proven false later, nobody could come after them because nobody knows who they are!

Secrecy and fair trials generally don't mix. This does cause some problems and may be inconvenient, but it is, as they say, the price we pay for freedom.

Let's face facts here, the vast majority of prison inmates, people whose lives have been ruined by our justice system, are in there for victimless crimes involving drugs.
Care to back any part of that loaded statement with facts?

I didn't check the web site. Does it specify what sort of crimes the informants exposed? Does it specify who they ratted out?

You might be thinking in terms of drugs, but what about the pawn shop owner who reports stolen goods to the police? Or the aerospace employee who tells the FAA about maintenance shortcuts and uncertified parts on commercial airplanes?

Many years ago, I helped the local cops break up a large burglary ring. Meanwhile, although some of my friends were known to partake of weed

You might be thinking in terms of drugs, but what about the pawn shop owner who reports stolen goods to the police?

Yes, the fact that the police are responsible for enforcing good laws as well as bad ones does present a problem. Taking steps to prevent them from enforcing bad laws often makes it more difficult for them to enforce good ones, so the question become one of compromise: Should we just sit back and accept the abuses of the police because they also help us in other situations?

Criminal neglect is a separate issue from drug use. Neglect can be the result of legal or illegal drug use (including alcohol use), or it can be the result of other mental problems. We can pursue and prosecute criminal neglect on its own merits, distinct from the question of drug use. We take this approach with alcohol as it is.

Aside from alcohol (which is --surprise!-- a drug), how many of the non-drug-related crimes were aggravated/incited by a deep unquenchable chemical-induced craving and a non-stop desire to obtain the chemicals in question?

I think that's what most folks arguing this tend to miss. Sure, people can be cold sober and still commit crime - usually as the result of mental retardation, ignorance, stupidity, or an over-sized ego. OTOH, when an otherwise normal brain is soaked in a narcotic, burns through it, and suddenly that brain cries out for more? All bets are off.

Thanks to the dumbasses who want to out the "rats" so bad, good luck finding out (much less prosecuting) anyone who commits a crime against you or your property in the future. Folks aren't going to be so eager to be a witness on your behalf if the odds are good that the perpetrator looked like some sort of psycho or gangster type, and potential witnesses stood a solid chance of facing bad mojo for the simple act of telling the truth in a court of law.

> Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money,> its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!This is a parent being neglectful. There are separate laws for that.

> When people cant think properly because they've taken too many drugs

Yes, that is "victimless" in the sense that the only person they're hurting is themselves.

Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money, its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!

No, it's child abuse, just the same as if they spent the children's money on a trip to Vegas. That doesn't mean that staying in a luxury hotel or selling someone an airline ticket is or should be a crime.

When people cant think properly because they've taken too many drugs

No, it's criminal negligence, just the same as if they put on a blindfold and got into their car. That doesn't mean that owning opaque pieces of cloth should be a crime.

People dealing drugs to others, even when the others haven't been shown how dangerous the drugs are, is a victimless crime. The people who recieved the drugs certainly weren't hurt!

If you choose to consent to something, you aren't a victim of it. Now, there might be a small minority that were addicted by someone else, in which case they are victims, but most people who use drugs choose to do so.

(And so on for the other examples)

Honestly, I could care less about the people who know the risks, and still use the drugs to the point of harming themselves. It's those that use them and harm others in the process, that bother me.

The vast majority of drug users don't harm others. For the minority that do, harming others is already a crime, so punish them for that.

Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money, its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!

Dude, that's not drug use, that's abuse.

When people cant think properly because they've taken too many drugs, or can't afford what they a mentally or physically dependant on, and rob/kill others for drug money, its a victimless crime.

Again, that's not drug use, that's robbery.

People dealing drugs to others, even when the others haven't been shown how dangerous the drugs are, is a victimless crime. The people who recieved the drugs certainly weren't hurt!

It's a consensual transaction.

Listen, I smoke pot every day. I have a job. I pay my bills. I did well in college. I have a nice home. I'm friendly with the neighbors. I'm good with kids. I love my family. Who is the victim here? If you believe I should go to jail for this, you're a far more dangerous man than I will ever be.

Laws can be unjust. In that case, I believe that we have a moral obligation not to follow them. Henry David Thoreau [eserver.org] covers this subject rather nicely. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King considered civil disobedience to be the central tenet in their own reform movements.

Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money, its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!

Of course that's not a victimless crime. The crime here is child abuse and neglect, which is not victimless.

People dealing drugs to others, even when the others haven't been shown how dangerous the drugs are, is a victimless crime. The people who recieved the drugs certainly weren't hurt!

It's a little difficult to accurately gauge the efficacy and dangers of a drug when, as schedule 1 drugs, it's very, very difficult to research them. That said, making a drug illegal will not solve the issue you've raised here. As our experience with alcohol and tobacco has shown, if you want to publicize the dangers of a

Yes, when parents don't feed their children because they need drug money, its a victimless crime, no one other than the parent is hurt!

Child neglect is already a crime.

When people cant think properly because they've taken too many drugs, or can't afford what they a mentally or physically dependant on, and rob/kill others for drug money, its a victimless crime. The people robbed/killed certainly weren't hurt.

Robbery and murder are already crimes.

Why shouldn't we try to actually prevent crime every now and then? How about, if you take the drug out of the equation? Parents don't need drug money, so they can feed the children. Child neglect prevented. Or someone didn't become physically dependant on some drug, and doesn't rob/kill anyone to get the money.

And before you go all "future-crime" paranoid, please be aware that there are such things as victimless crimes which are real crimes, because it will lead to someone being hurt. Drunk driving is such a crime. How would you feel if some jerk drank two whole kegs of beer and hit the road, and the police couldn't arrest him because he hasn't hurt anybody yet? Do you really think we need to wait until the guy kills a whole family with his reckless driving before we stop him? Until he hit someone, there's no victim, yet I do believe it is a crime.

Or how about someone walks into a bar with a pocket full of date rape drugs? Possession is not a crime, there are no victims, so nobody can arrest him. Let's wait until the guy rapes a couple of women before we can start an investigation after which we're not even sure we'll find anybody guilty because the woman can't even testify.

Walking into a bar with date rape drugs in your pocket is a victimless crime and should remain a crime, because it is very likely somebody will get hurt eventually. Driving drunk is a victimless crime and should remain a crime because it is also very likely that somebody will get hurt.

OK, how do you propose to do that? Is criminalizing use of certain drugs doing a good job of that? Not as far as I can tell.

In any case, when people say "victimless crime" they mean something victimless by nature, not by chance. Reckless driving may be victimless if you're lucky. Getting stoned in your own living room is victimless period. So drop the straw man.

"Or how about someone walks into a bar with a pocket full of date rape drugs?"

One drug is involved in more date rapes than any other by a very very long way. It doesn't fit in pockets well, but bars serve it.

We have, in Alcohol, a fine example of a drug that has been both criminalized and legally regulated. Every negative effect on users or society was much worse under Prohibition. Regulation is simply a better way to mitigate problems related to drugs; it works, and prohibition doesn't. Not creating a market that supports violent criminal gangs, and not locking up huge numbers of non-violent otherwise innocent people are just nice side effects.

I really don't understand this point of view, whatsoever. Most of the people I know who "decided" to become worthless junkies didn't really decide anything at all. They are generally uneducated, poor, and enmeshed in a flawed social strata or group. A lot of them don't, and never will, fully understand what they are doing to themselves, their loved ones, and society as a whole. The idea that everything is a rational choice is a myth, which should have gone away long ago.I would like you to venture about

I really don't understand this point of view, whatsoever. Most of the people I know who "decided" to become worthless junkies didn't really decide anything at all.

They didn't? They didn't decide to take that first dose? Or the nth one? Well in that case we have a different problem. Someone is out there on the loose forcing needles into people vein's without their consent. I think the police should stop them immediately.

The idea that everything is a rational choice is a myth, which should have gone away long

Denying that drug use is a victimless crime is astonishingly ignorant... of the definition of "victimless crime".

Drug abuse does increase the likelihood of other crimes which do have victims, but drug use in and of itself is indeed victimless. (Hint: If you're consensually engaging in behavior which harms you, you're not a victim. Stupid, yes. A victim, no).

See? You lock a guy up in his house with nothing but an Internet connection and a bunch of pot, and this is the sort of thing that happens. I bet his next project will be cataloging the exact coordinates of every bag of Cheetos in the world.

If this site does in fact gather all its information from documents that are in the public domain (as it claims), then there's not much in the way of recourse.

I wonder if soon we'll see a prohibition on this sort of data mining...making it a crime, or at least a regulated activity, to collate publically available data into a more usable form. I don't see how such a law could be enforced, however, since data-mining technology is already available to practically everyone. Perhaps we'll see restrictions on data-mining technology we currently see on encryption algorithms.

If this site does in fact gather all its information from documents that are in the public domain (as it claims), then there's not much in the way of recourse.

Well individual acts may be legal, but still expose you to criminal and civil liability if you carry them out. It's not illegal for me to tell my friend that he can use my car any time he wants without asking, and it's not illegal for me to cut the brake lines on that car; but if I don't inform my friend that driving it might not be a good idea, a

Yea, we need to stop all the data mining going on to research the cure for cancer. In addition, we need to stop the data mining looking for intellegent life in space. Heck, we need to stop the data mining involved in global warming research. Dude, here's your sign.

Also, one of the MAJOR purchasers of data mining services: law enforcement. I work for the IT staff at a local county government (which includes the Sheriff's department naturally). They have a subscription to a service (it's run by the same company that does LexisNexis) that lets them look up ALL KINDS of information on people. You want a Blue . . . maybe Grey SUV registered within 50 miles of a crime scene that has a 5 and either an I or 1 in the license number? Yeah, it'll pull that up for you. You want a GIS driven map showing every sex offender within a certain radius of a coordinate, complete the mug shots and everything? It'll do that. You want to find every person remotely connected to a suspect? As a demonstration the sales guy plugged in a random person from our office and it brought up a list a list that included a college roommate of his wife from 20+ years ago. All of it was sorted by "closeness" and it was a long ways from him, but it found it.

ALL of this information was data mined from public record. Basically, everything you could want to know about someone or something they had, and it was for sale. Only restriction is that they blank out the SSN of people if you're not law enforcement (we had to give specific IP's of the machines using the service so that they could ID us and open that up too).

The cop that offers to buy or sell drugs on the corner is an 'undercover agent' and chances are their name if not even their picture is probably available on the wall of your local sheriff's office not to mention they're still going to have to come into court to testify against you. More worrisome would be if they're giving personal information about the individual like their phone number or home address.